Jul28 |
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (update 3) |
A sad but still wonderful story about Randy Pausch, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
As many US-universities cultivate the tradition of “last lectures”, where professors hold their last lecture before retirement, Randy Pausch’s last lecture is particularly authentic: He’s going to die from pancreatic cancer. The video of his lecture “Really achieving your childhood dreams” became a sensation on the Web.
“My wife Jai has been an incredible source of stability and courage through all this. We both agree that “you can’t control the cards you’re dealt, just how you play the hand.”
(found on his blog http://www.cs.cmu.edu where he constantly writes about his last year of his life)
Update: As expected Randy died on July 25:
“Randy died this morning of complications from pancreatic cancer. The CMU news story is here.”
Update 2:
Hey, how cool is that (and yes, I know it’s a bit morbid to say “cool” when someone just died. But if you read his blog you realize how he dealt with the situation himself). He got into the new StarTrek movie. ;)
This is, by far, the coolest thing (okay, #2 behind the palliative chemo working). JJ Abrams (Hollywood producer/director who did the TV series “Lost,” the movie “Mission Impossible III” and a bunch of other stuff) emailed me, out of the blue:
[...]
Jai & I hopped a plane to LA, where I got a custom-made Star Trek uniform and my own station on the bridge, where I had lots of buttons and controls. I even got a LINE!!!!
[...]
the “Star Trek” movie will be in theaters December 2008. Don’t blink or you’ll miss me, but at some point a guy walked across the bridge and says “Captain, we have visual!”
Update 3:
By now his book was published.
